He heard Joe Aubrey telling the doctor, “The reason you don’t talk much ’less it’s about Jew boys, you know you sound like a woman. You use words like lovely and precious you never hear men saying. Or you come off creepy having all those drugs in your medicine cabinet.”

Jurgen reached them.

He said, “Gentlemen, Walter Schoen is ready to give his address. He’s going to tell you about all the women he’s been screwing for the past five years or so and give you their names. Vera will introduce Walter in a moment. Dr. Taylor, have a seat, please. Bohdan, if you’ll turn these chairs around . . . And, Mr. Aubrey, come with me, please. I want to see how you make your mint julep.”

“With rye? Are you kiddin’,” Joe Aubrey said, “and no mint? I swear, Vera’s the cheapest rich broad I ever met.”

Vera began with a quote from her predecessor assigned to Abwehr’s Detroit station, Grace Buchanan-Dineen.

“You will recall that when the Justice Department threatened Grahs with acts of treason, and she allowed them to plant a recording device in her apartment, Grahs said, ‘I was technically involved in the spy ring, yes, but I never considered myself morally guilty.’”

The statement made no sense to Vera. If turning in her spy ring wasn’t an immoral act, what was? It was a cheap out, getting the woman twelve years instead of a rope around her neck. Still, Vera used the quote. She made herself say to the group seated in her living room, there was no reason for any of us to feel moral guilt, fighting the good fight, working for the cause of National Socialism. But, she said, as the end of the war draws near, our efforts have proved to be, well, insufficient, despite the Führer’s inspiration, Vera said, wanting to bite her tongue. Even our brave saboteurs, two months from the time U-boats put them ashore, were tried by a military court and convicted. Six of our fellow agents were hanged, the remaining two, the informers, languish in prison. Vera had to pause and think before telling them the indictment against the thirty defendants last year for sedition ended with prison terms. We are told we have a right to free speech, but when we stand up for the truth, say that Communists control the American government, that Franklin Roosevelt, the cripple, gets down to kiss the ass of the midget Josef Stalin, we are imprisoned.

“I recall one of the defendants in that trial,” Joe Aubrey said, “invented what he named a ‘Kike Killer,’ a short round club that came in two sizes, one for ladies.”

Maybe she could get him to write the check and not have to kiss him or do anything else.

“This evening,” Vera said, “could be our last meeting. There are no recording devices in my house, or any one of us likely to inform on the others, despite the ruthless efforts of the Justice Department. Let’s refill our glasses, toast our future”-looking at Walter now-“and hear what our Detroit version of Heinrich Himmler is so anxious to tell us. Walter?”

They had turned off Woodward and were creeping along Boston Boulevard, the street divided by a tree-lined median and big, comfortable homes on both sides.

Honey said, “I can’t read the house numbers.”

“The one with two cars parked in front,” Carl said. “The Ford belongs to Walter,” the cars shining in the streetlight, “and a Buick.”

“That’s all?” Honey said. “What about the one we’re coming to?” Another Ford, three houses from Vera’s on the same side of the street.

“That’s FBI surveillance.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s where you’d park to watch the house.”

They crept past the car, Honey sitting taller to have a look at the black four-door sedan.

“There’s no one in it.”

“I’ll bet you five bucks the house is under surveillance.”

“Okay, turn around, and we’ll go back.”

Now she was telling him what to do. At the Paradiso, the restaurant, she kept telling him what to order, like the collards. In charge now since he’d chickened out. Would not jump on her when she showed him her bare breasts, Jesus, using them like a buck lure, and they’d gone out to eat instead of falling in bed. She didn’t act pissy or disappointed, she was making fun of him by giving him orders. Carl turned at the next opening in the median and started back toward the house. Now she told him, “Park behind Walter’s car.”

“What’re we doing?”

“I thought we’d drop in on the meeting.”

Carl pulled to the curb and stopped.

“You believe they’ll invite us in?”

“Don’t you want to see Jurgen?”

“When they tell me I can pick him up.”

“What if he’s gone by then?” She said, “You know what? I’ll say my ex-husband asked me to stop by and I brought a friend. We’d never met any spies before.”

Carl said, “You’re having fun, aren’t you?”

“Or, I’ll go in and you can wait here.”

“How about this,” Carl said. “You get out of the car you’re on your own.”

Honey got out and stood holding the door open.

She said, “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.” Closed the door and waved her fingers at him in the window.

Jurgen was seated with Vera on the sofa, more than half the living room from where Walter was standing in the opening to the dining room, a row of candles on the polished table lighting him from behind. He had placed a few newspaper and magazine pages on the table and now was ready to begin.

“All of you know of the enigma that shrouds the birth of Heinrich Himmler and myself.” He paused.

Vera groaned. She said, “Please, God, shut him up.”

“I think he memorized his opening,” Jurgen said, “and forgot what comes next.”

“Their date of birth,” Vera said.

“I was delivered into the world,” Walter said, “the seventh day of October in the year 1900.”

“On the same day,” Vera said.

“On the same day,” Walter said, “as Heinrich Himmler, the future Reichführer of the SS.”

“In the same hospital,” Vera said, her eyes closed.

“But not in the same place,” Walter said.

Jurgen turned his head to Vera. She was again watching Walter, saying, “What’s he doing?”

“Heinrich was born at home,” Walter said. “Two Hildegardstrasse in an upstairs flat. I also was born at home. However I was taken to hospital with my mother the same day where we were both cared for. My mother had suffered complications giving birth to me.”

Vera turned to Jurgen. “He wasn’t born in the hospital.”

“I have never lied to you,” Walter said. “I believed I was born in that hospital and came to believe Heinrich was also, as my twin, because so many people said to me from the time I was a lad, ‘Aren’t you Heini Himmler? Did you not move to Landshut?’ Or, someone says to me, ‘I saw you this morning in Landshut.’ It’s north of Munich fifty miles. ‘What are you doing here? Isn’t your father headmaster at the school?’ Now I’m living here, and by the thirties I see photos of Heinrich in German newspapers. Heinrich reviewing SS troops with the Führer. I look at the pictures of him and I think, my God, Heinrich and I are identical. I began to consider other similarities. Both of us born in Munich on the same day. Could we look so much alike and not be twins, born of the same mother? Why were we separated, kept apart? I began to believe Heini and I were put on this earth with destinies to fulfill.”

“Not unlike the Virgin Mary,” Vera said.

“In April 1939 I was asked by several of my Detroit friends, did I see myself on the cover of Time, the magazine. I was already reading about this rising star of the Nazi Party who must be my twin. Now he was gaining international attention. Heini was dedicated, conscientious. So was I.”

“Dedicated to what,” Vera said, “cutting meat?”